


Not Looking For Beef Chow Mein

by apiphile



Category: Dog Soldiers (2002), Harry Potter - Rowling, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Werewolf, mission 0001, mission_central
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood set out to capture an unknown hairy beast on the rampage in Cardiff (which is for once not Owen)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Where is it now, Tosh?" Jack yanked on the wheel and the huge, sinister-looking black SUV with the team name helpfully emblazoned on the side skewed lengthways at the end of the street. Three of Torchwood Three pinged off the walls like dried peas in a drum – Owen swore and started refilling the tranq-gun, Gwen tried to brace herself against the wall and muttered, "why do we let him drive?" and Tosh, trying hard not to lose her grip on the handheld tracking device, said, "left here".

Ianto Jones very pointedly pressed a button on the dash and a little "Now fasten your seatbelts" sign illuminated itself in a sickly shade of orange. As everything else in the SUV's interior was blue-lit (to what end, no one had yet asked Jack) it stood out sharply, and Owen kicked the back of his seat.

"Since _I'm_ the one dicing with hypodermics, _I_ should be sat there," he said, fiddling with something long, sharp, metal and terrifying.

"When you can learn to use a seat-belt like a grown-up," Ianto suggested, "I will happily relinquish it."

"Children, stop bickering," Jack threw the SUV into reverse. "This is not a family trip. We have something big and hairy to catch before it does some serious – Ianto, stop smirking – serious damage to someone. So far there haven't been any casualties and I want to keep it that way."

"It should be down this next alleyway," Tosh said. "It's stopped moving but still giving off strong vital signs."

"That's a dead end," Ianto observed as the SUV pulled into it.

"Then it'll be trapped at the end," Jack said, swinging the door open. "Owen, give me that tranq-gun – "

"Be careful," Owen handed it over, "if you miss it takes about fifteen bloody minutes to reload it and I don't think the rest of us really want to have to deal with scooping your internal organs out of the walls."

Tosh made a face.

"When have I _ever_ missed?" Jack cocked the gun and dropped onto the ground, landing with a gentle _whump_ on the orange peel and cigarette butts of the ill-frequented side road.

The beast _was_ cornered, but not by Torchwood. It stood at bay under the grey, dead light of the full moon and snarled in the face of a furious-looking border collie and a rangy man who appeared to be transfixed by it. At any rate, he was standing perfectly still.

"Stand back," Jack called to him, "we've got it covered."

"No," the man replied, not turning his head or moving even the tenth part of an inch from his stance, "_I_ have it covered. You, run." He had a Scots accent and was, Jack saw as he circled round slowly, pointing a handgun at the animal with the steady, unflinching posture of a trained marksman. He also appeared to have an old sword strapped across his back, but apart from that Jack could make out no more before his attention was diverted by a gut-churning howl from the beast.

"Night night," Jack muttered, and pulled the trigger on the tranq-gun.

The tranquiliser had an almost immediate effect, sending the big creature crashing down like a felled drunk in a typical Cardiff bar fight. It landed heavily on some discarded boxes, a last whine breath escaping from its lungs as the dog began barking frantically at it.

"Put the gun down," Jack advised.

Instead, the gun swung around until it was pointed directly between Jack's eyes.

"Not clever," Jack sighed.

"Tell your little friend to stop creeping up on me from behind or I'll shoot," said the man as his dog went into a frenzy of barks and growls.

"Ianto, stand down," Jack tried to make eye-contact with the guy pointing a gun at his face, but all he got back from the icy depths (he assumed they were blue, it was impossible to tell in the moonlight but they seemed too pale to be brown) was a savage blankness and the certainty that this man was not in any way, shape or form _bluffing_.

"What the fuck _is_ that thing?" Owen asked, moving down the alleyway.

"Werewolf," the man with the gun said, thought Jack was sure the question had been addressed to _him_. "Stay back from it. It's not dead."

"A _werewolf_?" Owen grunted, dropping into a crouch beside the big animal – its breaths came shallow and hot, flooding the alley with short bursts of rancid meat smell. It was not pleasant.

"Torchwood history," Ianto said somewhat unnecessarily and with just a soupcon of impatience, "the institute was set up by Queen Victoria after a brush with a werewolf. Do you never read _anything_?"

"Only the things I have _access_ to," Owen pointed out, scowling.

"Keep _away_ from it," the gunman instructed, not even so much as looking at them.

"Is it yours?" Gwen asked, and it might have been that she was going to ask him to lower his gun and continue their chat in a friendly fashion, but by that point Jack had become impatient. He slammed the gunman against the wall, knocking his gun from his hand, and pinned him there with one of his Trademark Pending Captain Jack Harkness Not In Any Way Sexually Threatening holds.

"Ianto, cuffs." Jack tried to stare the man down. "Now, call the dog off."

The gunman stared back with expressionless eyes. Jack could feel muscles bunching under the man's stained woollen jumper, and slammed him into the wall again. "Call the dog off or I'll shoot it." He pressed down on the man's chest and drew his own gun.

"Sam," the gunman said sharply, "_heel_."

"What are you doing here?" Jack snapped, not letting up the pressure on the gunman's chest and hips. The man was significantly taller than him (a depressing number of people were, although Jack had never found it held him back or indeed _down_) but he was thinner than his shoulders suggested he ought to be, and his demeanour and reaction time implied more than a few missed meals. By contrast, the dog was sleek and healthy-looking.

"Hunting that," the man jerked his head towards the wheezing shape at the end of the alley. "And if you've got any sense you'll let me get my gun back and shoot it. Or get my gun and shoot it yourself." He did not struggle, but he seemed much more concerned with the werewolf than he was by his current predicament and the proximity of Jack's own weapon.

"We're not in the habit of shooting anything that doesn't pose an immediate threat," Jack said, and Ianto snorted. Jack ignored him.

"We're _not_?" Tosh whispered, and Jack ignored her, too.

"No immediate threat?" the gunman barked. "It's a fucking _werewolf_." The veins in his neck stood out as he at last tried to extricate himself from Jack's grip.

"Which means that the rest of the time," Jack said, pressing his forearm into the man's windpipe, "it's a person. Get in the jeep."


	2. Chapter 2

The drive back to headquarters went at a much more sedate pace than the drive out, in part because the back of the SUV was somewhat weighed down with the body of the werewolf (Owen complained that he'd probably slipped a disk lifting it, and Ianto looked sadly at the wolf hairs all over his suit), and in part because Ianto had his gun pressed against the werewolf-hunter's temple and Jack wasn't ready to get brains on the upholstery if he could help it.

"You're making a big mistake," the werewolf-hunter growled. By his feet, his dog growled along with him, and Tosh shuffled her feet away as far as she could.

"You're on _our_ turf waving a gun around," Jack said. "You're the one making the mistake."

"Who are you?" Gwen asked, radiating friendly concern and harmlessness. "I mean, how did you come to be here – "

"Private Robert* Cooper, 65452308," he said, snapping even further upright. He said nothing more for the entire trip, despite Gwen's quiet, gentle attempts to engage him in conversation or draw him out or even get him to make eye contact.

When the werewolf was laid out and strapped down on the dissection table, Owen exhaled heavily and asked, "When's it going to be human again? Does anyone know? Or should I just start an examination and have a wild stab at the levels I need to keep it anaesthetised? Do I have time for a kip?"

"Sunrise," Private Cooper said. He sat in the position he'd been left in, his hands cuffed behind his back, as Jack examined his gun with interest.

"Silver bullets?" Jack said, emptying the clip out into his hand. "Do these really work?"

"Silver-coated," Cooper corrected, looking straight ahead, "and yes, they kill or suitably incapacitate any size of werewolf." He sounded as though he was parroting a learnt response. He twisted to see the dissection table. "It's less risky to kill them when they're in their human form."

"And less ethical," Gwen said quietly. "You … you've been going around _executing_ them?"

By the entrance to the autopsy room Ianto appeared with a tray of cups, and like a flock of carrion birds at a battlefield Torchwood descended, carrying off their favourite mugs to different corners of the room. Jack stood staring at his handful of sparkling bullets with a meditative look while he sipped scalding hot coffee.

Ianto lifting the remaining cup enquiringly at Cooper. "Milk, no sugar? I didn't know how you took it, so it's just an educated guess."

Cooper regarded him coolly. "How am I supposed to drink it with my hands behind my back?"

"You're a resourceful man," Jack said sharply, not looking up from his examination of the shells, "you figure it out."

"Where's my dog?" Cooper twisted again.

"Making friends with our pterodactyl," Tosh said with a minute but discernable smile.  Cooper didn't seem particularly fazed by this. He was probably the first person they'd had in the HQ who wasn't at all bothered by the presence of extinct fauna.

"Should I uncuff him to give him this?" Ianto asked, gesturing with the tea again. "And some … I think there's some left-over pizza in the fridge –"

"Hey, that's my _dinner_!" Owen protested.

"It's three in the morning," Tosh pointed out.

"Then it's my _breakfast_," Owen said, keen not to be deterred from the driving force of the argument. "The key word there is 'my'." He looked petulant, which was not a good fit with the large metal hypo in his hand but an unfortunately good one with the band badges pinned to his lab coat. "We have a deal, right? I get the spare pizza, and you don't get a doctor unconscious from _hypoglycemia._"

"Learn to _cook_," Ianto suggested.

"No," Jack interrupted. "I'll – Ianto, take him down to the holding cells. The one furthest from Janet, if you can. I'll take him something later myself." He was still staring intently at the shells in his hand, coffee forgotten.

Cooper got to his feet slowly as Ianto took his elbow and pushed him upwards. "You're not going to want to lock me in," he said. It was a plain statement of fact, no hint of a threat or brag. "When that thing breaks out you're going to need my help."

Jack shrugged. "We've handled worse. As a team."

"One of those took out my whole squad."

Ianto pulled on the hunter's cuffs at the point where they joined. "Come on, please."

Down in the cells, Janet growled and threw herself up against the plastic wall, as ever, and Cooper stopped abruptly in the hallway to stare at her. "What's that?"

"That's Janet," Ianto tugged on his cuffs. "She's a Weevil."

"I thought they came in flour."

"Different type of Weevil." Ianto pulled him into the last cell quite gently and locked him in. "I'll make sure you get some food."

Jack bumped into him on the way back up to the Hub, carrying a cup of tea. "We have three hours until our wolfy friend becomes human again," Jack said, jumping out of the way of the overspill of hot milky tea as Ianto did the same and just avoided getting any on his shoes. "Go and try to keep Owen awake, would you?" He patted Ianto on the shoulder and for a moment flashed him one of those terribly dirty grins that would have been so much more unsettling were they not flipped out at anyone who stood still for long enough.

When Ianto got back up to the autopsy room, Tosh had the dog clamped between her legs and was scratching behind its ears. The dog seemed torn between ecstatic wriggling at having his much fuss made over it, and whining and growling at the sedated werewolf.

"Are you sure that's hygienic?" Ianto asked.

"What?" Tosh scratched the top of Sam's head, and he jerked his nose towards her hand with a kind of moan-yip.

"Dog. Autopsy room." Ianto started piling empty cups back onto the tray.

"There's a bloody _werewolf_ on the table," Owen pointed out. He shot out a hand to catch his cup just as Ianto got to it. "Waitwaitwait. I'm not finished yet."

Ianto sighed. "Where's Gwen?"

"Gone home." Owen drained his cup and handed it over with a grimace. "Trying to reassure Rhys they still actually live in the same house, I think. Did you put _strychnine_ in that or something?"

"No, but if you impugn my tea-making skills again I will do."

"I think my cleaner sees more of my bed than I do," Tosh murmured. She sounded rather despondent. Sam whined and put his ears forward.

"I hope Jack's remembered to feed our prisoner," Ianto said, peering back the way he'd come as though he could see through the intervening walls.

"Why do you _care_? He's just some nutter with a gun full of mythological bullets." Owen peered into the bottom of his cup. "Were you using PG-Tips or something, then? I swear this tastes different."

"Look at him – he's clearly not eaten anything in ages – "

"So what? Jack goes _weeks_ without eating if you don't remind him."

"Yes, but when _he_ does it all that happens is he gets grumpier and calls you names. Oh, and he spends more time on the range," Ianto said, shifting cups around on the tray. "You're still annoyed about the _pizza_, aren't you?"

"Yes!" Owen said indignantly, "Because it's _mine_!" On the table beside him the werewolf slumbered on, the reek of rancid meat and wolf sweat still rising from it like flies from a recently-kicked cowpat.

Ianto rolled his eyes, and took the cups back to the kitchen. When he began making his way back across to the autopsy room, he found Tosh and Owen huddled around the video feed from the cells. Finger to her lips – and one hand holding Sam's collar steady – Tosh beckoned for him to join them.

"Shouldn't someone be keeping an eye on – " Ianto asked, pointing back towards the autopsy room.

"Shush," Owen waved him silent.

Onscreen, Jack had at least got as far as uncuffing Private Cooper and giving him his tea, although for some reason he'd chosen to keep the wall of reinforced plastic between the two of them, out of keeping with his usual policy of "get in the cell and intimidate the prisoner" that Gwen kept trying to wean him off.

"There are still a couple of hours until sunrise," Jack was saying, "so I'd get some sleep if I were you. You look like you need it."

"And at sunrise?" Cooper looked like he was trying very hard not to look desperately grateful for his tea, and he had both hands wrapped around the mug as if he were trying to draw subsistence by osmosis. Ianto knew the pose well, although generally when _he_ adopted it he was trying to absorb some kind of sanity from the one reliable quality in Torchwood Three's HQ.

"At sunrise you're going to come up and _talk_ to the person you've been hunting," Jack said – it was one of his more aggressive tones, but Cooper didn't flinch. No one could see Jack's face from the angle he was at, but Ianto was willing to lay money on him wearing Standard Jack Grim Expression #4: Military Variant.

"They're not people," Cooper corrected. "They're animals." He dumped the empty mug into the sliding tray with a crack that made Ianto wince. "If they were _people_ they could be held accountable for what they do."

"They're people," Jack said with a very harsh edge in his voice. Around the video feed, Tosh, Owen, and Ianto all winced in unison, "with an affliction. How long have you been hunting them, Private Cooper?"

"Six years." Cooper sounded weary, but he maintained his position – ramrod straight, as though someone had sewn a rod into his spine.

"Then you know a lot about them."

"I know where to find them. I know their habits. And I know how to _kill_ them. And that is all anyone needs to know." There appeared to be some kind of staring match taking place in the cells. Ianto almost expected the plastic wall to melt under the ferocity of two thousand-yard stares in an enclosed space like that.

"Then you can come upstairs at sunrise, and help us _cure_ one," Jack said firmly.

"He's just going to _leave_ that cup, isn't he?" Ianto muttered as Jack, onscreen, flattened his face against the plastic and presumably subjected Cooper to another stare.

"Shush," Owen said irritably.

"You can't _cure_ it," Cooper snorted, sitting on the cell floor. He put his arms behind his head and leaned back on one of the walls in a doubtless calculatedly infuriating pose. It looked a great deal like Jack doing the same thing – one of Jack's favourite strategies for when he couldn't just get in someone's personal space to annoy them. "They change themselves permanently. When one's bitten you – " Cooper contrived to imply that it was only a matter of time before this happened to Jack, " – there's no coming back."

"Private Cooper," Jack said, "I have some very, very, very clever people working for me."

"Does he mean _us_?" Tosh muttered.

"SHUSH," Owen groaned.

"They know things about medicine," Jack said, managing to sound impressive despite the vagueness of this statement, "about science, that the labs of the world can only dream of. If anyone can find a cure, it's them."

Cooper did not reply for so long that Torchwood, breathing hard on the monitor, were sure that he must have fallen asleep. When he _did_ speak it was only to say, "I would appreciate it if you could feed my dog."

Jack nodded curtly.

"These animals are a threat," Cooper said, slowly, "a very serious threat to the human race. I don't understand what objection you could possibly have to wiping them out, before they can harm anyone else."

Jack put his hands in his pockets. "A long time ago by my standards, or perhaps a long time _away_, there were a race of beings so bent on their own superiority as a race that they sought to destroy all life that _wasn't_ them – "

"Spare me the fucking Nazi analogy."

"It's not an analogy. These … things … were ruthless. Vicious. Determined to exterminate anything and everything that wasn't a … one of them." Jack had apparently fixed his gaze on Cooper again, although it was difficult to tell as all they could see on the feed was the back of his head. "They looked at humans and saw vermin. Unnecessary life. They hated, so completely, so unbendingly … I don't want us to be like them. I don't want to set out to destroy every non-human that crosses my path." He rolled his shoulders and said quite nonchalantly, "I mean, there's at least one alien I'm kinda fond of."

"Alien," Cooper snorted.

"You hunt werewolves," Jack said.

"I would appreciate it," Cooper repeated, "if you would feed my dog."

Jack nodded again, even more curtly, and strode away.

"He's coming back up," Owen muttered, and he stumbled away back to the autopsy room at a speed that belied his drooping eyelids and pointed yawns. They had barely settled back around the comatose lycanthrope when Jack came in.

"Owen, Tosh, go and get some sleep." He hardly looked at them as he clattered down the stairs with something shining and small in the palm of his hand, and took up a position beside the werewolf. "Ianto – take some food down for our … guest." He reached down and fastened something around one of the animal's limbs. "And – take the dog with you. He'll probably be pleased to see it.

As Ianto left a faint scent of burning hair and flesh drifted to his nostrils. He took Sam's collar Tosh's hand and led the unresisting and surprisingly waggy collie to a spot just outside the kitchen.

Cooper got to his feet when Ianto arrived and stood there almost to attention while the greasy pizza box was shoved into the sliding tray – Ianto put the mug on the floor by his feet – and Sam barked joyously (having growled and shook like he was in a thunderstorm as he passed Janet's cell. Janet had done much the same) and wagged as though his backside was having a seizure.

"More tea?" Ianto asked when he'd finished pushing everything else through. Sam barked and pawed at the window, his wagging decreasing a little.

"You're not going to let my dog in, are you." It was not a question.

"I'm afraid I can't. I can leave him here with you, though." Ianto picked up the empty mug and held it with both hands.

"Not staying, then." Cooper didn't appear to ask questions at all; he'd spit out a phrase that ought to have been one, but the inflection just wasn't quite questioning (Ianto wondered if he'd forgotten how to do that in the course of his single-minded pursuit of werewolves, or if he was just not a very … expressive person).

"I'm more likely to be needed upstairs." Ianto turned to leave.

"_Good dog_," Cooper said without any indication of whether he was talking to Sam, or speaking of Ianto.

The next few hours passed very slowly. Jack – who had apparently heard of sleep but not felt the urge to try it out – paced around the autopsy room (which now smelt rather badly of scorched werewolf, a smell which was a long haul from being remotely pleasant), checking restraints, tranq-guns, scalpels and the like, and generally messing with Owen's equipment to an extent that would doubtless have set his teeth on edge were he awake to witness. Ianto almost dozed off against the curved and tiled walls of the room as he watched nothing happen  listened to the second hand of his watch tick round, but he dragged himself awake again each time Jack's pacing brought him nearby.

After what seemed like an absurdly long time Jack looked up from his wandering. "Go and wake them up and grab Private Cooper while you're at it, would you?"

Ianto was tired enough to think _would it kill you to say please?_ But he did as he was told; Tosh squinted at him and asked why he was in her house and Owen called him Mandy before reason caught up with his mouth.

"Who's _Mandy_?" Ianto asked, handing him coffee.

Owen gave him a traumatised look. "NO ONE."

Private Cooper was not asleep. He _was_ sitting, his wiry, half-starved body pressed against the plastic divider while Sam whined and licked the glass. "Time," Ianto said, drawing his gun and a spare pair of cuffs from his breast pocket.

Cooper struggled to his feet. "Did he keep the gun?"

Ianto didn't answer, but opened the cell door very slowly. Cooper didn't appear to be interested in putting up a fight, tough, and he turned almost obediently for Ianto to cuff his hands.

"Did he keep the gun?" Cooper repeated as they passed Janet, accompanied by a cautiously wagging Sam.

Ianto ignored him. He wasn't sure which answer would keep Cooper quiet and calm, or what Jack would have wanted him to answer, and he felt appallingly tired.

Owen stifled a yawn as Ianto returned to the autopsy room with Cooper in front of him at gunpoint. "Fucking hell," Owen grumbled. "All these guns've got me on edge. I'm going to end up poking my own eye out at this rate."

"Hello, _Sam_," Tosh said as the dog ran up to her and thrust his muzzle into her hand with a little whine of doggy pleasure. "_Who's a good dog?_"

Sam thumped his tail on the floor.

"Should be soon," Jack said. To Ianto's frank amazement there was a pot of tea sitting on one of the tables. He hadn't supposed anyone else would have thought of that. The tension in the room was palpable – even Sam sensed it and stopped wagging – and, just as Owen was clearing his throat presumably to say something stroppy, the werewolf's body gave a great seismic heave that appeared to start at the guts.

The restraints rattled and squeaked but held.

"Time, Owen?" Jack barked.

"Five forty-six –"

"Any minute now," Jack grunted. Sam's barks as Tosh grabbed his collar were mostly drowned out by the blood-curdling noise that issued from the werewolf's distended throat. It sounded like a dog in considerable rage and distress, but magnified by the deep ribcage of a seven-foot-long humanoid form. It made all the hairs on Ianto's body stand on end and his scalp crawl. He tried to suppress a shiver and was only a little gratified to see the gooseflesh on the back of even the werewolf-hunter's neck.

Jack, of course, just checked the straps and nodded at Owen. Another spine-stiffening, underwear-ruining sound burst from the werewolf, and after a moment of worried staring Ianto realised that it was not as hairy as it had been, and that it seemed smaller without having made any truly visible change.

Another will-destroying howl rent the air, and all the more horrible because this time it had a hint of humanity to it, because this time it sounded not just like an angry wolf but also a human in very real pain and distress.

"I feel sick," Tosh muttered, clinging onto Sam's collar. The dog was whining, tail curled so far up between his legs that it hugged his stomach. The figure on the table almost seemed to be writhing itself smaller, becoming more and more humanoid and less and less hairy, its voice dropping from primal snarls to a yell of agony and finally tapering off into a tortured gasp and some panicked panting.

When it was over – Ianto blinked – a middle-aged man was lying naked on the table, his limbs stretched painfully apart by restraints set for a much larger patient. The man's body was liberally splattered with scars old and new, and he was clearly underweight, but he was quite handsome in spite of this – his scar-slashed face might otherwise have stared out of a TV screen as that of a friendly headteacher or doctor in some whimsical drama set on the Yorkshire Moors.

Ianto felt moved to give him a cup of tea and some clean trousers, but he reined in the instinct and concentrated on making sure Cooper made no sudden moves.

"Oh," the werewolf said. He lay still on the table and said in a quiet, measured voice with no real accent – a Radio Four sort of voice – "Where am I?"

"Torchwood," Jack said. Ianto noticed that Sam was now cautiously wagging his tail again.

"I'm sorry, is that meant to mean something?" the werewolf frowned. "Is there any chance you could – "

"We're not untying you yet," Jack said firmly. "But we _are_ here to help you."

"Would this help extend to some underwear? A pair of trousers? Only I feel a little … vulnerable. And there smells like there's a lady present."

"Not yet," Jack repeated.

"At least take off the bracelet?" Something quite shiny still augmented the man's tether's, and the skin around it looked horribly inflamed, cracked and red raw, "it's causing me rather a lot of pain."

"I'm afraid we can't risk that." Jack stood behind the werewolf's head. "Now. Who are you, and why did you come to Cardiff?"

"_Cardiff_?" the werewolf sounded horrified. "I was trying to get to London … I don't imagine that anyone would come to Cardiff on purpose – "

"Yes, thank _you_," Owen muttered.

"My name is Remus Lupin – "

"Oh pull the other one," Owen growled, and even Cooper gave a disbelieving snort.

"I can't help it if my parents were unusually prescient," the werewolf sighed. "It's my _name_. And … well. Listen. My wife is dead. My friends are, I must assumed by now, also all dead. I would not be entirely averse to just having something silver shoved through my heart by this point, but if you're _not_ going to kill me please at least _untie_ me."

"You see, Captain Harkness," Cooper said before anyone else could speak, "he _wants_ to die."

"Quiet," Jack snapped, circling the table.

"Jack," Ianto suggested, almost under his breath, "perhaps since Mr. Lupin isn't actually trying to eat anyone at the moment – "

"_NO._"

"Gwen would say the same if she was here," Tosh said a little reproachfully, trying to restrain a wriggling collie dog with her knees.

"Who runs this team, me or Gwen?" Jack demanded.

Torchwood maintained a tactful silence.

"If I might interrupt?" the werewolf – Mr. Lupin – suggested hopefully. Jack sighed but waved him on all the same. "What … exactly are you hoping to achieve by keeping me strapped to a rather cold table, naked – that couldn't be achieved by just keeping me in a cell with my clothes on?" He cleared his throat and tried to raise his head. "Beyond my continual humiliation."

Jack nodded to Owen, who reached down to unbuckle and untie the straps. After some wincing and rubbing of his limbs, Mr. Lupin sat up and massaged the back of his own neck with a glassy expression.

"Ianto!" Jack said, when the silence had grown long enough to be genuinely uncomfortable. "Get Remus here some clothes."

"I can't do that _and_ hold a gun to Private Cooper's head, sir."

"Not to worry." Jack drew his own weapon with the characteristic ocular glint and worrying grim smile of Jack With A Gun For Any Reason, "Got that well covered."

Ianto shrugged and went to find some trousers. Owing to the sheer number of disguised, disintegrated, dead or frozen humanoids Torchwood had dealt with recently, they were massing a considerable collection of discarded clothing. He found a pair he thought might be in the right size and which _didn't_ have bell bottoms (the Seventies had been playing up and virtually _spewing_ teenagers into the 21st century in the last few weeks, and only their lack of mobile phones set them apart from the ones that were already around) or too many bloodstains, scooped up one of the nice jumpers, and arrived back in the autopsy room to find Mr. Lupin patting Sam distractedly on the head, Owen looking put-upon, Tosh holding a bloody handkerchief over her nose and Jack pointing a gun at Cooper's temple and using this point of leverage to back him into a wall.

As Ianto slowly descended into the room, Owen passed Tosh some more tissues and Cooper said in a low monotone, "I was making sure my _dog_ was okay."

Ianto threaded his way through the maze of medical equipment and handed the spare garments to Mr. Lupin, upon whose face "bemusement" and "physical pain" seemed to be conducting an intense battle. "Would you like some tea?" Ianto added, gesturing to the teapot. It seemed like the sole beacon of civilisation in a very bestial room.

Before Mr. Lupin could answer there was a sickening crack of skull meeting tiles and Jack growled at a shockingly still-conscious Private Cooper, "Don't even _think_ of trying that – "

"Welcome to Torchwood," Ianto said dryly to the werewolf. "Tea?"


	3. Chapter 3

"A cure?" Mr. Lupin said some time later. He had been putting tea away at a considerable rate – Ianto had had to refill the pot twice – and showed no sign of stopping. And all the time that he drank, Cooper watched him with almost unblinking pale blue eyes, and Jack held a cocked gun just out of the former soldier's reach, and Ianto was fairly sure that Tosh and Owen's nerves were fraying as inexorably as his were over all this.

"Gwen should be back in soon," Owen said, apropos of very little, and Jack said:

"Good."

"A cure," Tosh repeated, glancing at Jack. "Or at least that's the idea. We're going to need to take … to take some blood samples."

"I – there already is," Mr. Lupin paused and looked frustrated. "There's a _treatment_."

Cooper laughed. It was not a friendly laugh. "Bollocks. If you had a treatment for it what the fuck were you doing running around Cardiff all hairy and mad?"

Ianto had to concede he had a point, and apparently everyone else did too.

"I _had_ it. I don't have any anymore," Mr. Lupin grimaced. He averted his gaze from the rest of the room's inhabitants and stared at the back of his hands for a while.

"Do you know what it involved?" Owen asked, all business. "We might be able to synthesise something similar."

Mr. Lupin said, "No, I don't think you could," and Owen bristled.

"I'm sure you're all very clever people," Mr. Lupin said hastily, "but this takes years and years of the kind of training you will not have had." He said this with such absolute certainty that Owen's expression of wounded prided almost subsided.

"Do you remember any of the ingredients?" Gwen asked from the doorway. Everyone turned – except Cooper, who couldn't move – to look at her. No one had heard her come in, but Ianto realised he _had_ heard the crunch of excess paperwork underfoot not so very long ago, and had mentally dismissed it.

Mr. Lupin considered this for a moment, as Sam lolloped over to investigate the newcomer (largely by sticking his nose into her crotch, which Ianto rather sourly supposed was almost Torchwood-approved greeting policy by now), and turned his empty mug around in his hand. "Wolfsbane," he said at last.

Owen snorted. "Oh _seriously_."

"Wolfsbane is definitely the principal ingredient," Mr. Lupin insisted, frowning (despite all the – very loosely-termed – "literature" on the subject of werewolves that Ianto had ever read, Mr. Lupin's eyebrows did not meet in the middle). "It's in the name of the stuff." He looked apologetic. "I'm afraid I don't remember much else. The … the person who made it for me guarded the secret from me and most others quite assiduously, and as I tended to drink it in tea … I don't even know how it's supposed to taste, beyond _very bitter_."

"Why not just let me put him out of his misery?" Cooper asked, and Jack lunged and thumped his head off the wall.

"Please don't do that," said Mr. Lupin, "he has a point – if I cannot be _controlled_ it's in everyone's best interests – "

"_No_," Gwen said, weaving round both dog and medical equipment to come and grasp his hand – a movement which made the werewolf jerk back suddenly – "we will _find_ a way to help you."

"Shooting him would be a big help," Cooper muttered, and Jack waved the butt of his gun at him, a belaboured threat. "Stop trying to shut me up, Captain Harkness."

"Look at him," Jack growled. "He's a _person_. An ordinary person who deserves a chance at – "

"With respect, _sir_," Cooper bit back, "I have been hunting him and people like him for six years. I _know_ what their lives are like. Go on, ask him how many jobs he's managed to keep. Where his wife is. How he lives."

Mr. Lupin coloured. "My wife's death had nothing to do with my … condition."

"Maybe not _directly,_" Cooper said, but he was prevented from explaining himself or baiting any further by Jack rapping him on the head with the butt of his gun and snapping:

"Am I going to have to _gag_ you, Private Cooper?"

"None of this is helping us – " Tosh began, and before she could get any further Owen put his hand on the werewolf's forearm.

"Don't put that jumper on just yet. We're going to _have_ to take those blood samples. I'll keep the … the 'wolfsbane' in mind, right … I'm sure we've got records of its chemical makeup –"

As Owen went on, mumbling increasingly chemical terms that no one understood as he began preparing to take a sample, Mr. Lupin looked up and caught Ianto's eyes.

"What are you going to do to me?" he asked quietly, and before Ianto could think of something to say, Gwen had a hand on his shoulder and was giving him the full benefit of her hypnotically reassuring voice.

Having little else better to do – and wanting to avoid the sudden wince on Mr. Lupin's face as Owen slid a needle into his thin arm – Ianto started tidying the autopsy room. Tosh watched him – he could feel her eyes on his back, her indecision – but opted to "help" Owen, handing him a phial he could have reached himself.

"There we go," Owen said, after a while. "I'll take a look at that …"

"Remus," Jack said, still pinning Cooper to the autopsy room wall. "If you want to get some rest there are a couple of beds – "

"I'll show him," Ianto said, putting the tea tray down.

"Great. Private Cooper," Jack tugged on his captive's cuffs, "is coming back to his cell, and he and I are going to have a little _chat_. Gwen?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to need your help for this one. And, uh, bring the dog." Jack prodded Cooper behind the ear with the muzzle of his gun. "Move."

Calling the room in which the bed stood a "guest room" would have been a dreadfully misleading act: Torchwood did not have guests, only the occasional prisoner. In truth it was more the room where various Torchwood members collapsed when they'd been working too hard and now hadn't the energy to go home and couldn't face another cup of coffee without getting chest pains and double vision. Ianto explained this to Mr. Lupin in an apologetic fashion, and the werewolf gave him a hollow smile and said what a change it was to have a bed, however briefly.

"So, I'll just …" Ianto suggested, pointing at the door. He didn't actually budge.

"Will you?" Mr. Lupin asked. He looked drawn and exhausted, lying flat on his back with his borrowed trousers hanging loose around his concave stomach (patterned with so many scars that he looked like a barber's pole), but he didn't close his eyes.

"Perhaps not," Ianto agreed.

There was a very long silence, during which Ianto thought the werewolf might have fallen asleep, but just as he was considering walking off (he'd heard that watching people while they slept was widely considered to be creepy), the recumbent werewolf opened one eye and said wearily, "If it was just one person … I wouldn't be so keen for your Private Cooper to finish me off."

"Eh?" Ianto was somewhat bemused by the non-sequitor.

"But it's not just my wife," Mr. Lupin continued, staring up at the ceiling. "Friends. People I was responsible for. Everyone. Everyone has gone." He dragged his gaze from the ceiling and locked it on Ianto instead. "It's been a very … a very _lonely_ few years. I think I would rather your friend with the silver bullets did his job."

"He's not our friend."

"I do hope your Captain Harkness isn't _doing_ anything to him. Not on my account." The werewolf sighed. "There's been enough suffering on my account."

Ianto couldn't help but make a wry face as he leaned on the doorframe. "Oh, believe me, if Jack _is_ doing something it'll be because _Jack_ has decided to. The rest of us get preciously little say in it."

Mr. Lupin barely seemed to hear. "I thought I was in hell for a while," he said, so hollow, so quiet that Ianto had to strain to hear him. "They tell you, don't they, that hell is other people. But it's not. It's … it's the absence of being with people. You forget what it is that makes you human. You forget … warm bodies. Touch. Hands. Not complicated things, like … like kissing or … just small things, - even a hand, on your shoulder. You forget what it's like. You forget – you forget that other people do that. That everyone else is human, too."

Ianto quite wanted to turn away. His eyes felt moist and he had a burning need to find Jack and … and … and _something_. Kiss him or pat him on the arm or touch his hand or anything at all. Instead he sat down on the foot of the single bed, just beside Mr. Lupin's feet, and said – faltering the first time, an unexplained obstacle in his throat, "Would – _ahem_ – would you like me to stay here? While you sleep?"

Mr. Lupin looked like he might lose consciousness at any minute. "That would be … it would be very kind."

Not really thinking about it, Ianto stretched out on his side, the fabric of his suit catching on Mr. Lupin's scars, his width pressing the emaciated werewolf against the cold, unpainted wall, and very carefully put his arm over the man's chest. "Sleep."

In the cells, Gwen held Sam's collar and tried to hold back a snarling, growling, protective collie from savaging Jack's calves, as Jack banged on the plastic divider and shouted at the cell's occupant, red in the face and hoarse in the throat.

"Jack – " Gwen sighed. "Let me – "

"This isn't _hunting,_ Cooper, this is a vendetta," Jack growled, ignoring her and smacking the heel of his hand into the plastic. Sam barked, but Cooper didn't flinch.

His expression, however, verged on the contemptuous. "I don't know what outfit you're captain of, sir," he said, and it might have been a sneer and it might not have been, "but we don't _do_ that in the paras."

"Gwen," Jack said without dragging his face away from the plastic, "take Sam, go and wait upstairs. I'll call when I need you."

"Jack, I'm not leaving so that you can start – "

"Who's in charge here?"

"_Fine_." She seized Sam's collar and dragged the struggling animal away with an air of wounded dignity, which alas made her hips swing even more than usual.

Jack slumped against the plastic and stared Cooper in the face. The werewolf-hunter didn't so much as blink. "You don't _harm_ him," he said in a low voice, "not unless there's a need. And right now, there is no need."

Cooper said, "Do you know what these things can do?"

"I've seen worse," Jack said shortly. He drummed his fingers against the transparent wall. "I've _done_ worse."

"So I'm vengeful and you're atoning, is that it?" Cooper all but sneered, "I _know_ not to shoot unless it's need. I _know_ not to torture prisoners. I _know_ how to treat people who rely on me, _sir_. I always have."

Jack took a deep breath. "Stand back from the door."

Cooper shuffled backwards as Jack let himself in, and stood in a decent approximation of "at ease". Jack had just opened his mouth to explain the apparently complex moral stance of "killing is bad" from a position of some considerable hypocrisy, when Cooper smacked him in the mouth and shoved him into a wall.

Jack did not stop to ask himself how the fuck the soldier had broken out of his cuffs, just headbutted him in the face, seized an arm and twisted until Cooper's face was crushed against the wall and Jack's weight pressed on his back. "_Mistake_," Jack hissed, jerking Cooper's arm so the man's body twitched with pain.

"How do you know," Cooper grunted, his chest flush against the rough rock wall, "this isn't what I was aiming for?" He sounded like he expected Jack to leap away in disgust; probably using sexuality as a defensive weapon had worked for him before (_sad little century_, Jack thought, _so easily perturbed by pleasure_), but he hadn't reckoned with Jack's complete absence of boundaries.

"Then you should have said," Jack muttered, testing him. He twisted enough to press his groin against Cooper's thigh – for effect, he wasn't that hard yet – and the soldier tried to jerk his head back into Jack's face. "_No_," Jack said, and yanked harder on Cooper's arm.

Cooper emitted a short snarl of pain and shoved again. He was rewarded by Jack scraping his face against the stone.

"I should just – " Jack tightened his grip, "- just take you at your _word_."

"Fuck you."

"Ex_act_ly."

"Let go of my – _gnnn_ – let go of my arm."

"No thanks. I'm not looking for another split lip."

Cooper went limp, and the sudden relaxation of all his muscles at once almost made Jack lose his grip.

"That's not going to work either," Jack warned him.

Cooper said in a low voice, "Get on with it."

"Show a little enthusiasm," Jack said with a half-purr. It was intended to be threatening, taunting, and possibly a little arousing, but Cooper's face creased into a challenging smirk against the rough rock wall.

"Give me something to be enthusiastic _about_."

Jack turned him so quickly that the soldier barely had a chance to let out a winded "oof". "Might want to be careful what you ask for," Jack warned, and kissed him. He was duly wary of the likelihood of having his tongue bitten out (it had happened to him once in Ancient Rome, and it stung like a bitch) or being headbutted in the face in retaliation, but apparently that old Harkness magic was doing its thing, and Cooper merely pulled back for long enough to say:

"I am _not_ rolling over to show you my belly," before allowing Jack to thrust his tongue back into his mouth.

Jack hooked a finger under Cooper's shirt as he did so, and lifted it up. He pushed hard on Cooper's mouth and laid a hand flat on his bare stomach, the "is that so?" going unsaid as the private's skull made brief but gentler contact with the wall again.

To Jack's _wary_ delight (he was keeping at least part of his mind on the whereabouts of his service revolver) Cooper responded with the same vim he'd applied to his struggling, and one square and weatherworn hand cupped Jack's hipbone with force.

Mr. Lupin's quiet, shallow breaths filled the room for some time, and once or twice Ianto thought about sneaking off to check on how Jack and Gwen getting on, or if Tosh and Owen needed anything, but the warmth of another body beside him was somewhat magnetic. Instead, he leant himself to an examination of Mr. Lupin's fulsome collection of scars. Pink, white, purple, red, and brown lines and circles in varying stages of healing covered every inch of his torso.

Ianto himself had some wicked-looking burn scars on his upper arms from long ago, but Jack, owing to the nature of his being, had none at all. He said even the ones he used to have had vanished when he'd _come back_ the first time.

Fascinated by this tapestry of suffering, Ianto unconsciously unfolded his hand and began tracing the thousands of lines with his fingertips, following them as they intersected, crisscrossing with a feather-light touch the ridges of ribs and sternum.

He could not have said for how long he continued in this vein, his mind absent and his hand traveling mechanically and without guidance, but eventually he glanced up and saw that Mr. Lupin's eyes were open, that he was watching Ianto's movements with an expression that Ianto recognized but couldn't place. For a very long moment Ianto and Mr. Lupin held each other's gaze and at last Ianto's brain caught up with his eyes, and he blurted, "Sorry – " and snatched his hand away.

There was another eternally long silence in which neither took his eyes off the other, and Mr. Lupin said in so low a voice that at first Ianto thought he must have imagined the words out of wishful thinking, "Don't stop. Please."

"Don't – _nggg_ –" Jack struggled rather frantically to gain control of his vocal cords as Cooper – on his knees and still dressed, though thanks to the stretched neck of his jumper a bony clavicle and the swell of one shoulder gleamed pale in the dim light of the cells – bit his hipbone very hard.

"Don't _what_?" Cooper asked, raising his head.

"Don't _stop_," Jack said, too breathy to sound truly irritable, and he aimed a swipe at the soldier's head that was intended to miss. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his braces hung down around his tense thighs, but his shirt – though untucked – remained buttoned, and Cooper had been so flummoxed by the hook and eye arrangement fastening Jack's trousers that Jack had been forced to undo them himself.

"Never sucked off an officer in dress uniform before," Cooper muttered by way of an explanation. The corollary tickled Jack.

"What, all NCOs in fatigues, was it?"

Cooper's face darkened as some memory or other drifted through his mind like a cloud eclipsing the sun. "Pretty much, yeah."

But now Cooper's mouth was full and it was all Jack could do to keep a level enough head to remember his revolver (still safe in its holster), his keys (nowhere that Cooper was likely to find in the next ten minutes) and to keep his eyes open. He settled for locking his fingers across the back of Cooper's neck over a slug-trail of cold sweat, the short sharp bristles of strawberry blond hair raking his palm like a shaving brush, and watched as his dick went in, and slowly out again, of Cooper's mouth.

There was no question that he had done this before, with some man who had uncomplicated tastes, and Jack could feel his spine and belly prickle with each pull of Cooper's tongue, with each clumsy or perhaps deliberate tap of tooth enamel on his tenderest skin.

Jack knew he was probably gripping Cooper's head too tight, that he was beginning to push too much with his hips and that he was in danger of gagging Cooper with his dick if he didn't hold back –

He pressed his thumbs into the soft places behind Cooper's ears and shoved his head forwards to meet his hips, thrilling a little (still!) to see Cooper's blunt nose disappear in the depths of Jack's chestnut-brown pubes. "FFff," Jack hissed, and Cooper made a choking noise.

Jack pushed harder, digging in every finger, the sound of Cooper gasping for air through his nose driving him on.

For a while there was no sound but the muted pants and wheezes, the air filled with the scent of sweat, and not a thought in Jack's head beyond "revolver: check. Keys: check", but just as he felt the pressure in his abdomen reach an unbearable height, his fingernails leaving red crescent moons in Cooper's nape, Jack found himself acknowledging in the pit of his mind _I would never be this hard on Ianto_.


	4. Chapter 4

Mr. Lupin – _Remus_, Ianto thought, _let's not be too British about this_ – had a mouth that felt like torn steak. Jack had, for their only date, taken him to a restaurant that served meat so tender that it was like consuming blood-laced butter; kissing Remus, as Ianto was, his hand resting like a ghost's on the werewolf's chest, made him think of that preternaturally soft flesh. He could even taste the blood, coppery and warm, flowing around his tongue.

"Sorry," Remus murmured, pulling back, "my lip … not healed yet. Do you …"

"Mind?" Ianto slid his palms from Remus's sternum til it cupped his ribs from underneath on the far side of his body. "Not if you don't."

"How could I _mind_?" Remus whispered, and Ianto felt a hand on the back of his neck, drawing him in again. The werewolf had surprisingly neat hands, all scars and nicks excepted, with heavily-bitten nails, their white moons winking over very pink, flat nails, his fingers long and thin and scholarly.

But it was Remus's mouth that concerned him now, not his hands, and Ianto tried to be gentle, as gentle as he could, with that torn lip, that tired but charming tongue.

His hands traveled like thoughts, one holding the back of Remus's neck to keep his head steady, the other roaming from armpit to hipbone but always with the arch of arm over him, like a bridge between loneliness and the safety of human contact.

It was Remus who expressed a desire to drag them further into the physical realms, by hooking surprisingly nimble fingers through Ianto's collar to loosen his tie. Ianto didn't want to relieve himself of Remus's skin beneath his fingers – it seemed the werewolf had the undressing situation under control.

Indeed, when Ianto next paused for breath his shirt was open to the waist and Remus was outlining blunt sigils on his nipples with his thumb. Ianto smiled, because it was easily the lightest touch they'd been subjected to in well over a year, and because it tickled a little, and Remus jerked his hand away with a guilty expression.

"Hey … " Ianto muttered, and rather than finish the thought, he put his hand under the waistband of Remus's borrowed trousers. They fitted so badly that he could fit his whole hand under without unbuttoning them, but after a moment he undid them anyway, exposing a cock that was significantly larger than it had been on the chilly and intimidating operating table.

Remus made a gentle hissing sound as Ianto leaned down and pressed his closed lips to the head. It tasted … utterly revolting. It wasn't as though the man had really had any chance to wash, though – Ianto told his gag reflex where to go, and opened his mouth.

"Mmmf," Jack grunted – half-swore – as he came down Cooper's throat. He saw, but didn't register, the red lines on the back of the soldier's neck, the pink marks on the man#s cheeks.

"Jack?" said an elated-sounding Welsh voice in his ear.

He tapped the radio link. "Gwen?"

"We think we're onto something – something really good – "

"I'll be right up there."

Cooper, still on his knees and wiping his mouth, raised his eyebrows.

"They have a solution," Jack said a little prematurely. "You might as well get up." He tapped his radio link, and didn't offer Cooper a hand at all. "Ianto?"

There was no reply.

"IANTO?"

A breathy and oddly distant reply followed quite a while later. "Yes?"

"… is something wrong?"

There was another very long pause. "Nothing. I was just … having a rest."

Jack shrugged to himself and watched as Cooper dusted off his knees. "Upstairs. Tosh is onto something."

Cooper snorted. "This I have to see."

"You're going to," Jack assured him, dressing himself at speed. "Come on."

Tosh held up something the approximate size and shape of a bullet, covered in tiny, tiny crenellations of green, making the whole thing look surprisingly beautiful and verdigris. Torchwood, and their slightly pink and glowy captives, waited for an explanation.

"It's self-perpetuating," Tosh said, "it draws its energy from the blood, like an internal organ, and it restructures any lycanthropic DNA that passes through it** – which all of it has to, eventually." She cleared her throat hopefully, but her colleagues, with the exception of Owen, gave her a politely blank look. "The implant," Tosh sighed, "should prevent a full transformation from ever occurring, but you will probably still get some symptoms around the full moon – heightened senses … you'll be a little hairier and more moody around the full moon, really –"

"But women deal with that all the time so it can't be _too_ difficult – " Owen put in, and Gwen glared, and Tosh coughed pointedly.

"If I may?"

"Sorry."

"We _think_ that, with a little adaptation and some outer casing, the implant will be – well, it can be _fired into_ other werewolves," Tosh gave Cooper a nervous smile. "So you could probably –"

Jack beamed. "You're a genius." He smirked at Cooper. "See. I told you they were clever."

"Oh, no, the cure was all Owen, I just modified a – "

"Tosh," Owen said, elbowing her in the side, apparently very hard, "take a fucking compliment."

"That looks quite large," Remus said, but he sounded optimistic. "You're not going to shoot me, are you?"

"Oh, no," Tosh said hurriedly, "No, no. Local anesthetic – "

"And a scalpel," Owen said, picking one up and raising his eyebrows. "Shooting's only for the … well, the ones who haven't exactly volunteered. I suppose that's where yer man Cooper comes in."

Cooper gave a businesslike nod. He appeared to like the idea. "Do you know that it works?"

Owen sighed. "Look, we're going to stick it in this guy's arm, okay? If he turned into a wolf tonight we know it doesn't and we need to make some more adjustments. If he doesn't, it's worked, and he can go and get on with his life – "

"And you," Jack said, clapping Cooper on the shoulder, "can have as many of these implant-bullets as we can make. I'm not going to interfere with your work if I know it's doing good."

Ianto raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

"If this works – " Remus cleared his throat. "If this works, I would quite like to give … to give other people in my situation a chance to _volunteer_, as you said …rather than having to be shot." He gave Cooper an anxious look. "If that's at all possible."

Almost as one, Torchwood turned to look at the former soldier.

He shrugged. "No skin off my nose if you come with me. _If_ it works."

* * *

  


* No first name is listed on imdb for his character so I winged it.

** Worst science ever, but if Owen can "disrupt the DNA sequence" by stabbing John Hart with a hypo full of "mixed DNA samples" then I can bloody well do this.


End file.
